Speaker 1: The Thinking Atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
an idea.
Speaker 2: The population of atheists this country is going through the.
Speaker 1: Rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If I
tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth, not
because I put my hand on a book and made
a wish and working together for a more rational world.
Speaker 3: Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness. Truth,
Usian wisdom will come to you that way.
Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
Speaker 3: I saw this cartoon and it shows various elements bing
crushing darkness, time drags, seemingly no escape inhospitably cold, and
one person says black hole, and the other said, no,
it is just January. And right now, of course, we've
been seeing this historic what meteorologists have been calling a
once in a generation winter storm blasting across the southeast.
It's just been crazy. I'm ready for spring. I don't
know about you, but Natalie and I have been waking
up recently and we just brace ourselves. Now we're waiting
to be force fed the next dose of existential dread.
What will the algorithm bring us today? What's the headline
going to say today? What fresh hell awaits us today?
And we have been then seeking therapy, distraction, something else
to think about, and we've gotten hooked on this docu
series that is streaming on Prime. It's called The Yorkshire Vet.
And I'll just describe it here while I'm waiting for
the switchboard to populate with calls today, is your calls
on any subject that you want to talk about? The
Yorkshire Vet. These charming people, doctors and nurses and support
staff at Skelldale Veterinary Center in Thirsk, North Yorkshire. This
beautiful stretch of land and all kinds of creatures great
and small, treated by the Yorkshire Vets. Someone brings in
a mommy dog that is having trouble delivering puppies, and
so the vets intervene and before you know it, there's
a table full of puppies. Oh my god, the puppies.
They're just so freaking cute. Somebody else has a chicken
and the chicken's not properly digesting its food, so they
put this little anesthetic mask on the chicken head and
it goes to sleep, and then they make a little
incision and they pull out like two pounds of food
that just got stuck. I mean, it's fascinating stuff. And
then the chicken wakes up like nothing happened and goes
on with the rest of its day. You have a
kid brings in his pet rat, but the rat is
three times the size it's supposed to be because the
kid's been feeding it essentially candy. So they put the
rat on a diet and then they monitor the weight
of the rat throughout the show. They bring in baby
goats and have to remove the horns, which you think
would be traumatic, but it's actually not. In fact, it's fascinating.
And the beauty of UK medical shows is that they
don't shy away like in the United States. If we
get anywhere near an incision or blood or private areas,
even on cows and stuff, they just blur everything. But
not in the UK. They just show you everything, for
better and worse. And as there is death and life
in the real world, there is death and life in
the show, which adds a little bit of urgency to
the cases that come in because you honestly don't know
that everything is going to have a happy ending. Occasionally
it doesn't usually though it does, and we are obsessed.
We watched three seasons in a week, three seasons of
the Yorkshire Vet. We're so tired we can't even keep
our eyes open, lying in bed with the TV on.
You Let's just watch one more honey, cute sweet animals
being rescued and rehabilitated. That's good medicine. So if you're
looking for a distraction of your own, and you like
critters and the Yorkshire countryside and don't mind seeing the
occasional pile of undigested chicken food, I just want to
throw that recommendation out there. Okay, that's a freebie from
me and Natalie to you. And now that I've bought
us some time, let me take us to the switchboard.
I've got Mick on a web call from Australia. Mick,
thanks for calling. What's on your mind?
Speaker 4: I just wanted to have a quick talk about what
I consider God's hypocrisy. God of the Bible, I would
reckon is probably one of the greatest sinners, certainly in
the Old Testament than anyone else ever. And I mean
by that would be the seven deadly sins. So you've
got the seven Deadly sins and the God of the
Bible constantly commits them NonStop. Now, you and I and
anyone else would probably get their asses thrown in health
for it, but he keeps doing it all the time.
For example, he's constantly brought to Rah. He is envious,
jealous of everyone else, of other gods. He has pride, Well,
there's jealousy straight up as well, and quite a few others.
Speaker 3: What do you think, I think you're onto something. He's
to do as I say, not as I do, God,
isn't he absolutely?
Speaker 4: Absolutely? I tried looking at a few others. You can
put him down a slice, because for most of the
early part of the Old Testament he was constantly talking
with people and walking on earth and what other rubbish.
And then, of course ever since then, he's never shown
his face to anyone ever again. So that's laziness, isn't it.
Speaker 2: It is?
Speaker 3: Indeed, I got to look up all of them now
and just make sure I'm remembering the seven deadly sins pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath,
and sloth. Trying to think about gluttony if he's a
spiritual being.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I had a bit of trouble with that one.
Speaker 3: Well, maybe it's more gluttony in terms of like coveting.
You know, he once see he's gluttonous for power, obedience
and worship. Maybe that's gluttony.
Speaker 4: I buy that absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 3: What's the religious climate in your part of Australia?
Speaker 4: So we're obviously not as fanatical religious as you guys
are over over there in America. For the most part,
over here isn't as big a deal. People have their religion.
Some people have their religion and they go to church
every Sunday, But the numbers are waning over here, and
I think I looked it up a few weeks ago
and it's probably down to about forty or fifty percent now,
which is a good thing I suppose. But most people,
unlike what I hear from going on in America where
people are at work and they ask you about God
and all that sort of rubbish, that doesn't happen here.
People really don't give a shit about religion. Oh so
it's a good climate to beer, mate.
Speaker 3: I envy you. Yeah, it would be nice.
Speaker 4: Can I ask you one thing Trump has already gone
after Rowe versus Wade and with the Christian nationalists getting
in again, is it probable they're going to go after
the establishment clause in the First Amendment, because that's been
on the thorn in their side.
Speaker 3: It's already happening. We've got blacklists, We've got threats against journalists.
We've got the threats to remove credentials from any sort
of non sycophantic publications. We've got the oligarchs who are
running the Washington Post, etc. And they are censoring their
own people. You've got journalists who are quitting in protests
and trying to start management free journalism elsewhere out in
the wild on the internets. You've got the Christian nationalists
who have long been going after the establishment clause. We've
got in my home state, we've got a politician who
has submitted yet a again, for the umpteenth time, laws
to put the Ten Commandments in public schools. And I'm
at oppressive. I'm right here on the razor's edge because
part of me wants to be informed about the world.
I don't want to be uninformed, is a better way
to say it. But at the same time, I want
to protect myself from the unbelievable, jaw dropping, brain melting,
heart kill bullshit that is going to be going on
for the next several years, and I don't know how
to handle it, and I'm struggling with it.
Speaker 4: You know what I'm saying, Well, you guys aren't alone.
You know pretty much most of us here in the
rest of the world are on your side. And sometimes
when I'm debating Americans, I say, well, you know, your
air politicians, none of your business will the matter effect
is that anything that happens in America, I'll fix all
of us here in the rest of the world. So
really we've got to say as well, even though we
haven't got a vote, we do have a say.
Speaker 3: We are all the human condition. Everything that happens here
does ribble out. There are consequences, and you absolutely have
every right to have an opinion and to even be
an activist on that opinion. And I welcome your partner.
I feel like, ten thousand miles away, I have a
brother who understands me, who feels my pain and the
pain of so many millions of Americans. Mick, I hope
to get back down Under in the next few years.
Maybe it's worth a fifteen hour pl Lane ride from
lax to Sydney just to be down to that beautiful place.
So if I get down there, we'll shake hands and talk.
Speaker 4: Okay, great, talk to you, Mike. Thank you both that
I see you later.
Speaker 3: Take care. I've got Mike at five two zero. Mike,
are you there?
Speaker 2: I am here?
Speaker 5: How are you? Seth?
Speaker 3: I'm well? Thanks for calling. What's on your mind today?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 6: I just want to start out. I want to give
you a little thank you. You were instrumental in my
own journey out of Christianity. You were the first atheist
that I came across when I was first starting to
really doubt, and your work has done a tremendous help
for me mentally and emotionally and dare I say spiritually?
Speaker 3: Wow, that's huge. Thank you. How'd you find me? Would
you type the word atheist into Google?
Speaker 7: So?
Speaker 6: No, Actually, so it started out because part of what
I wanted to talk to you about is that you
had mentioned before that during your formative years you were
partly raised in Pentecostal churches. That's where I came from,
That's where I came out of, and I had already
left Pentecostalism, and I was just kind of rooting around
looking for something that fit me better in a sense.
And it's just It is quite literally one of those things.
The YouTube algorithm back in two thousand and decided that,
you know, I was looking at just what different faiths
were believing, and your one of your videos popped up,
your video about Noah's art, and I watched it, like, yeah,
that makes sense, and so I kind of followed down
that rabbit hole, and he led me to reading books.
Christopher Hitchins, got a not great kind of got me
into Sam Harris when he was more of a public figure,
and a few short years later I just kind of
came to the realization of holy shit, I actually I
don't think that there is a God. So yeah, it
was quite literally I stumbled on you.
Speaker 3: My mother was a Pentecostal, and I remember the times
we went to Pentecostal churches. They did the you know,
jumping around and speaking in other tongues, you know, thanks
to the Holy Spirit. How intense was your Pentecostal faith?
Was it that kind of thing?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 6: Yeah, very much, so very much. The speaking in tongues,
running around the aisles, the rolling in the aisles. You
know that people make the jokes of barking like dogs,
But that did happen a time or two and it
was all just performative art to show everyone that, hey,
you know, I'm a true blue Pentecostal. See how in
the faith I am.
Speaker 3: Mike, if I can jump in quickly, did you speak
in tongues and roll around and do all that? And
if you did, where did that come from? Did you
feel pressure? Like, well, everybody else is doing it, so
I have to show that I'm filled with the Holy
Spirit as well.
Speaker 4: Yes I did.
Speaker 6: The first time that I did, I was this is
going to sound terrible. When I was six years old
and it was a special service some missionary hitcom raising
money for a mission he was doing somewhere on the
other side of the world, and they had that altar
call and the pastor's assistants asked, who hasn't had the
Holy Ghost? And so, you know, me being all six
years old, raised my hand, and so they brought me
up to the church. And in the church at the
time of about two hundred people, I was the center,
focal point, and I had about fifty people crowding in
around me, putting hands on me, all of them yelling
and gibberish, and so I started crying because at six
years old, that is a huge thing to put onto
a child, and my lips started quivering. And to them
that was speaking in tongues. It's like, oh, he has
the Holy Ghost. And so you know, that was you know,
this big, huge celebration, but I'm just falling and crying
and being curled up in a ball. And so from
there it became the norm. You know, now that I
have the Holy Ghost, I have to learn how to
actually speak in tongues. And it's not something that they
actually like to admit that they teach you how to do,
but they do. And so you learn, you know, how
to you know, you hear you know, the pastor doing
any people around you, and you just start to do
the same kind of things. And so I started doing
that because that's how you show that a Christian and
you want to fit in. So yeah, I can say that, yes,
I did speak in tongues, and I can absolutely guarantee
that it is all forced and it's a learned habit
and behavior.
Speaker 3: How do have been a tough journey to bust out
of that? Are you doing okay? Are people judging you?
You're people trying to anoint you with a whil and
lay hands on you and do all that pentecostal stuff
you bring you back home.
Speaker 6: Not anymore. It has pretty much destroyed my relationship with
my family. We speak on holidays, that's about it. But
I'd rather have my peace than family that doesn't accept
who I am. I'm so I've got my wife and
my dogs, and you know, we're just out here living
our best life.
Speaker 3: You got family here, Mike. What are your dog's names?
Speaker 2: I have mut his name is Bilbo.
Speaker 6: Then I have a purebred beagle and her name is Pippin.
Speaker 3: Bilbo and Pippin. Oh, give him scratches ye for me.
And thanks for the kind words and sharing your story. Mike,
You're much appreciated.
Speaker 6: Thank you, sir.
Speaker 2: Keep up the good work.
Speaker 3: Take care of yourself, little bill boy. I love dog names.
Some of my favorite dog names are human names. I mean,
the dog names are fun, but I just I mean
all animals, whenever they have a distinctly human name, like oh,
look here's my kakatoo. His name is Larry. I just
think that's awesome. You know, this is Charles. There's something
so charming about that. Tony at nine seven zero, Thanks
for waiting. Are you're there? Yes, I'm well, Tony.
Speaker 5: Hey, I did see that video that you made. That
one what was it called The Story of Us?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the one I was whining about a few weeks ago.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's like.
Speaker 3: I mean to me and nobody watched it, and somebody
was like, would you like some cheese with that wine set?
Then they're probably right. I was being a big baby.
But thanks for watching it, Tony.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I posted it on Facebook and I sent it to
a lot of my family members. I used to be
a Christian, but not anymore, probably not for the last
eighteen years. But yeah, none of my family ever answered
or acknowledged that I even sent it to them, and
they think I'm going to Hell.
Speaker 3: Take a number. You and I are going to the
same hell. So maybe I'll just I'll save you space
if I get there first.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, there always is. I need to get back
into church and get my life right with God so
I don't burn in hell. So anyway, Yeah, you're not
alone out there.
Speaker 3: Well I appreciate it. What else is going on, Tony, I'm.
Speaker 5: Just working right now. I enjoy listen to your shows
and your podcast and learning a lot. Just want to
say thank you.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you, Tony, and have a good day of
work and safe drive home.
Speaker 5: Okay, all right, thank you sir, see you later.
Speaker 3: Five one two? Is it Gomez?
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, it's what King Glomez? Hi, how are you doing?
Speaker 3: Welcome? Let's talk what's on your mind?
Speaker 2: Hey, I'm just not sure if your community is aware
of the recent ridiculous flat earth debunkings that have been
going on. Mostly I see a lot of religious people
believing in this pseudoscience stuff, you know, and well there
is professor Dave. I'm not sure if you're aware of that.
It's kind of been viral.
Speaker 3: You're talking about Dave Farina. Help me understand the flat
Earth has a new conspiracy theory or there's a new
method of debunking flat Earth.
Speaker 2: Well, there was a recent they caught it, the Final
experiment where they went to Antarctica to see today believed
that the sun was a twenty four hour son and
on their flat earth model, they're like, if there is,
you know, they there was just all these conspiracies around.
No one's allowed to go to antarcticle. So some rich
guy paid for basically the top flat earths to go
down there see if themselves, and some of them actually
turned away from it when they realized that their theory
was wrong and the sun is twenty four hours in Antarctica.
They used to think there was like an ice wall.
But honestly, most of them are still believing this pseudoscience,
even though their own thing, it's called the Final Experiment,
was kind of recently that I wouldn't say, like two
weeks ago, they went down their head. They're still clinging
to their beliefs, I guess.
Speaker 3: All right, yeah, well, thanks for talking about it and
thanks for calling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, thank you. Keep up the good work man.
Speaker 3: See you later. Okay. I pulled up the news story.
This was published on the eighteenth of December twenty twenty
four after a pastor took a group of flat earthers
to Antarctica to prove definitively what shape our planet is.
Some of the truthers were startled to find that the
globe is indeed round. In an expedition dubbed the Final Experiment,
Pastor will Duffy took a group of flat earthers to
Antarctica for the first time ever. His mission to prove
that there are no barriers literal or figurative, to prevent
him from visiting, but also that the sun shines there
twenty four hours a day in the summer, something that
simply couldn't happen if the planet was actually flat. Pastor
Duffy said, I created the final experiment to end this debate.
After we go to Antarctica, no one has to waste
any more time debating the shape of the Earth. In
a video from that voyage, flat Earth influencer Jaron Campanella
admit that when it comes to the midnight sun, he
may have been mistaken, and Jaren actually made this confession
or admission on video.
Speaker 8: Here's the clip, so obviously you all know Jaron Campanella
of Jaronism, one of the most popular flat Earth YouTube
channels for long. All right, guys, sometimes you are wrong
in life. And I thought that there was no twenty
four hours son. In fact, I was pretty sure of it.
But I respect Will Duffy for being a stand up guy,
at least in the way that he kept saying it
was true. I kept saying it wasn't. He said, do
you want to go, I'll take you and brought me here.
And it's a fact the sun does circle you in
the south. So what does that mean? You guys don't
have to figure that out yourself. Don't listen to my
beliefs or my opinion. It shouldn't matter to you, but
at least you should be able to accept that the
sun does exactly what these guys said as far as
circles the southern So that's about it.
Speaker 5: I realize that.
Speaker 8: I'll be called a shill for just saying that, And
you know what, if you're a shill for being honest,
so be it. I honestly believe there was no twenty
four hour son. I honestly now believe there is.
Speaker 3: Okay. Couple of things on this real fast. First of all,
Pastor Will Duffy, who is the pastor of a Christian
church in wheat Ridge, Colorado, a gap a Kingdom Fellowship.
He's a volunteer pastor. He took that role after the
original pastor passed away, so we sort of jumped behind
the podium and he's been there and he believes the
earth is a sphere, and he organized the trip and
he managed to convince what three or four flat earthers
who took the journey that yes, the Earth is a sphere.
It is not flat yet I have to wonder a
Pastor Duffy has read his own Bible about the shape
and nature of the planet. The first chapter of the
Book of Genesis, God said, let there be a dome
in the middle of the water. Let it divide the
water from the water. God made the dome and divided
the water under the dome from the water above the dome.
That is how it was. And God called the dome sky.
So apparently there was the water here that we see
in our lakes and oceans. And then there's a firmament,
think of a snow globe. Right, We've got the flat
earth here, and then we've got the big dome, and
then there's space water that has been separated out there.
And a lot of Christian apologists like to use this
particular verse in scenario to explain Noah's ark. God allowed
or caused a rift in the firmament, so the space
water spilled down and covered the planet in liquid right,
And this is part of the foundational book of Pastor
will Duffy's religion. Has he not read the Book of
Revelation Revelation seven to one. And after these things, I
saw four angels standing on the four corners of the Earth,
holding the four winds of the Earth. How can the
Earth have corners if it's a sphere. Secondly, and I
think this is kind of typical, and we've discovered this
about identity beliefs and conspiracy theorists. Duffy sent out a
press release in advance of the trip, and he said,
once we go here and we demonstrate the Earth isn't flat,
the debate will be over and no one will need
to waste any more time. Yet, oh how he had
underestimated flat earthers, who would protest from ironically all around
the world. On websites and in forums and across reddits
and social media platforms. Flat earthers have been explaining why
it's all fake. They're talking about camera angles and shadows
that make no sense and footprints. There was even a
pastor in Alabama who said Satan was involved in the
planning of this expedition and the posting of these lies
about an earth which is obviously flat. I talked about
flat earthers in my speech that I posted just a
few months ago called the Brick Wall Brain why facts
aren't changing minds, And I encourage you to look that
up because we get into why identity beliefs are just
so entrenched and so hard to change, but I got
to give props to the people who took the trip
and looked around and saw the sun and said I
was wrong. I'm going to update my position. That does
give me a little bit of hope. Anyway, we have
more of your calls. Whatever you want to talk about,
we will talk about next. My patrens get the broadcast
commercial free. They also get a two days early. And
your support is so welcome and appreciated. Patreon dot com,
slash Seth Andrews. I've got Michael on a web call. Michael,
thanks for waiting. Are you there?
Speaker 4: I am? How are you, Seth?
Speaker 3: I'm well, what's on your mind?
Speaker 9: I'm just looking at the trends around us and how
fewer and fuel people know how to vet sources. Fewer
in fer of people know who they should trust. You know,
there's really no such thing as an authoritative source to
a lot of people, a lot of people. You know,
you did a video recently about how facts don't change mind.
So I'm wondering how do we navigate this as a society,
how do we move forward? I mean, I think you know,
shows like yours are important and I support them, and
I talk about these issues with my friends and family,
but it doesn't seem like that's enough. So, you know,
can you look into your crystal ball a little bit?
Speaker 6: For me?
Speaker 3: This is the dilemma and I with it. And it's
interesting because ninety nine percent of scientists can say whatever
like evolutionary scientists that you know, there's a consensus. But
in the minds of some the more there is a
scientific consensus, the more it proves the conspiracy that scientists
want to lie to you. And what do you do
with that? Right, Michael, Right?
Speaker 9: And you know, to some extent, the meta of this
seems to be like we're preaching to the choir if
you'll forgive the pun, you know, because the people who
are good at skepticism and critical thinking, they don't need
to be told those things that they should be open
and I think, you know, it's the people that need
to hear it are the ones that aren't paying attention
to what we're saying and have no interest in the conversation.
Speaker 3: I think one of the utilities of shows like this
and the tone that I try to set for better
and worse, is to maybe create a forum where we
can better tooel ourselves up for conversations and our own
life now where we go out and we interact with
the world. I'm trying to be a d escalet. I'm
sick and tired of all the name calling and the
pointing and the blaming and the shaming on the micro level,
on the day to day level when we deal with
our friends and neighbors. And I mean, I understand frustration,
but I'm trying to get to the point where we
can get in and maybe create a crack that lets
in the line. But I'm surrounded by people who, even
to this day, are more afraid of the COVID vaccine
than they are of the COVID virus. I know somebody
who thinks the Earth is a disc I know people
that think the Earth is a few thousand years old,
like the Samerians. Apparently the Samerians didn't exist, right. Michael
and I have the same ole.
Speaker 9: You know, you can't reason yourself out of a position
you didn't reading yourself into. I think that applies. But
you know, you know, me and my partner, we've both
been working and practicing and getting better at spotting logical
fallacies and being informed and learning how to have those
conversations and navigate them and call out the bad arguments
when we see them. And I think you're absolutely right.
I think more people having that skill set is going
to be an avenue here. But you know, I always
feel like maybe there's something more we should be doing,
and I'm not sure what that is.
Speaker 3: The imperfect answer is that we are going to have
to determine which sources are credible, and I think those
questions to a degree can be answered. I mean, you
can see actual vetted, peer reviewed scientists who are publishing
in Nature, etc. I'm not saying they'd never gotten it wrong,
because they have, but I mean I think we can
do our own homework to see that we have credible
researchers and teachers and even scientific activists who actually know
what they're talking about, and they're continually checked by others
who are experts in their field. And there are hubs
for those types of information, and if we contrast them
with say evolutionnews dot com or Joe Rogan or some
of these other benchit we can see that one is
going to be more credible than the other. There are
websites like Snopes and up. There's very fact I think
is another winner verify. I have to look it up
off to fact check my website fact checking. But there
are more and more of these things which at least
tool us up to take that journey and do our best.
But our best is always going to be imperfect. And
in the era of bad info and the oligarchs and
fake news and deep fake videos, etc. I don't know,
I'm overwhelmed by it, Michael. I'm just overwhelmed.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I am too. And you know, it's nice to
share some sort of kinship in that regard, and like,
I'm here to try to move this forward. I'm here
to try to do the right thing and try to
improve society for everybody. But it just seems like it's
just a tsunami right now. And it just it feels
like I'm a very small person trying to fight the tsunami,
if you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And that's a strategy. You know, the disinformers out there,
it's like the Merchants of doubt, that book that was
written about the tobacco industry, etc. They don't need to
go out and debunk as much as they need to
create a fog so that no one knows anything, nob
bod he trusts anything, and you know, when you get
people to question even the most basic of things. The
Earth is a sphere, we landed on the moon, vaccines work, etc.
You can get people just to decide, well, nothing is verifiable,
then you can get away with murder. And that's so
frustrating in the era of the oligarchs, the billionaires now
have weaponized the media and the largely ignorant public is
lapping it up. As Carl Sagan rolls over in his grave.
And the best I know how to do is to
try to find hubs where the experts are and we
can verify that they are experts being peer reviewed and
checked by other experts, to set them off, to sort
of cull them from the disinformers out there, to do
our best to ask the hard questions. It's an imperfect solution,
but it's all I got, Michael.
Speaker 9: Yeah, you know, I've arrived at the same conclusion, and
I'm watching you know, I've been studying AI lately, and
that's just the worst possible. We pour the gasoline on
the fire of people asking this. You know, this algorithm
questions now and the algorithm doesn't know what's true and
what's false. It's just repeating things. So yeah, I think
it's going to get worse before it gets better, unfortunately,
And I'm just trying to think about how do I
prepare myself to people around me, to basically meet this
head on.
Speaker 3: This is related, Michael, I saw a ted talk from
a man. I'm doing this from memory, so give me
some grace. But he was talking about a new kind
of scam. He picked up the phone and his son
was on the other line, and his son had been
he was overseas in real life, he'd been overseas. But
the voice of his son said, I have gotten myself
in legal trouble and I need ten thousand dollars wired
here if I'm going to get out of jail. Dad,
Can you help me, Dad? Please? You know, I want
to come home. And his father was, of course absolutely traumatized,
and he wanted to rescue his son. But over the
course of this short conversation realized that there were a
few things that didn't ring true, and it became apparent
that the voice was computer generated to sound just like
his son, but it was in fact a scammer. And
for that reason, Natalie and I have come up with
i'll call them safe words, you know, honey, if I
have a call with an outlandish story and I need money,
or I'm trying to get resources, or I want your passwords,
or I need any of this other stuff. Here are
some questions that only you and I would know the
answers to. We have to verify each other's identity because
we live in an age where somebody could call and
sound like me or you, and the other might not
even know the difference. So maybe we need an entire
culture of passwords, verifiable words, proof of life words, safe
words when it comes to those types of things. I
don't know.
Speaker 9: Oh that's a good thought, and that's certainly something I'll
be talking with my partner about. So thanks for that anyway. Yeah,
I love the show and have it as a anyway
I can and keep doing the keep fighting a good
fight set.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Michael, Take care, Take care. I just pulled
up this related story. It's a different instance, but it
sounds awfully familiar. This is becoming a more common scam.
October twenty twenty four, a California senior citizen was swindled
out of twenty five thousand dollars by scammers using an
AI voice mimicking his son to make him believe his
loved one was involved in a horrible accident and needed
money to be bailed out of jail. The man, identified
only as Anthony, said he received a call from who
he believed to be his son, saying he'd struck a
pregnant woman while driving and she was rushed to the ICEU.
It was his voice. It was absolutely his voice, he
told ABC seven News. There was no doubt about it.
Anthony said that after a short conversation, the scammer using
his son's AI generated voice hung up, but he received
a second phone call minutes later from a man claiming
to be his son's lawyer, Michael Roberts. He said, you
need to get nine two hundred dollars as fast as
you can if you want to get your son out
of jail. Otherwise he's in for forty five days. Suspicious
about the lawyer's call, Anthony said he tried calling his
son to verify that he needed the bail money, but
his call was sent to voicemail. The worried father then
went to his bank and told the teller he needed
a large sum of money for solar panel installation, so
as to not raise any unwanted questions about the situation.
After returning home, Anthony had his daughter call the lawyer again,
who told them an Uber would be by shortly to
pick up the bail money. Surveillance cameras outside his home
show his daughter verifying the Uber license plate number and
handing the money to the driver. However, the scammers weren't finished.
Moments after the driver left, Anthony received another phone call,
this time from a man named Mark Cohen, who identified
himself as another lawyer on his son's case and told
him the pregnant woman had died and his son's bail
had been raised to twenty five thousand dollars. Fearing his
son desperately needed the money to be bailed out of jail,
the concerned father returned to the bank and repeated the
entire process. After pulling out more money from the bank
and handing the second payment to another Uber driver, the
call stopped and Anthony was left wondering if his son
had been released from jail. As they waited, he said,
his daughter began researching the number and what was said
to him online, where she made a disheartening discovery. Dad,
I hope I'm wrong, she said, I think you've just
been scammed out of twenty five thousand dollars. Anthony said
he was so worried about the fate of his son
that had never even crossed his mind until after the
fact that he was being swindled out of a large
chunk of his savings. Los Angeles Police Department Detective Chelsea
Sager told ABC seven that scammers have become more clever
and sophisticated over the years. They're using social media and
technology to craft these very believable and convincing stories, and
people really do believe they're talking to a grandchild or
a government official. While phone scams are not, new technological advances,
specifically in artificial intelligence and number blockers, have opened a
new playing field for fraudsters who prey on unsuspecting victims
to steal their hard earned money. They call and when
you answer and it to scammer, there's silence. They want
you to say hello or is anybody there. All they
need is three seconds of your voice to input it
into AI and clone it. The detective also said scammers
will go through video posts on social media as a
way for them to capture voices and clone them to
use to defraud others. Seger told the outlet the department
was investigating what had happened to Anthony and looking into
the drivers who had picked up the money. However, she
revealed that uber or lift drivers are usually uninvolved in
the con and are just hired to complete the task,
completely unaware that they are even part of the scam.
Sanger said, never to send money to someone you don't know. Anyway,
that's the gist of the story in some of the
details about this fresh new scam. Keep your skeptical eyes
and ears and mind open and on alert out there.
A lot of folks are trying to take what you
have by sounding like someone that you already have a
relationship with. Pretty scary stuff. Bernard at four seven zero, welcome,
thanks for calling.
Speaker 10: How are you?
Speaker 7: Can you hear me?
Speaker 3: I can? What do you want to talk about? My friend?
Speaker 10: Originally, you know the danger, you know, of the encroaching
theocracy that they're trying to impose on us. Here there
was something that doctor King said, you know that I'm
thinking about it. You know, we want to ban porn,
even if you don't watch porn, like many of us don't.
It's an encroachment on free speech, and I worry about
people like us, people like you Seth and Arn and
so many others who are trying to speak this truth.
You speak reason, because it's not going to stop. As
doctor King said that, you know, threat to justice anywhere,
a threat to justice everywhere. They won't stop. And I
think that's the real fear, because this ideal, its time
has come. And there's nothing more powerful than an ideal
whose time has come. And this is why they're so terrified.
And that makes them really dangerous, you know, because I
am a former Jehovah's witness, and I'm telling you it's
a cult. You know, you come out of it and
you look back. You don't realize you're in a code
until you're out of the cult and you look back,
Oh my god, I was in a code. It just
doesn't make any sense, you know. You begin to put
the pieces together, You begin to speak to people who
are informed, read books that are informed, look at all sides,
and then come to the logical, and not only the rational,
but the moral conclusion that this doesn't make any sense.
Because when I left, I lost in that certainty that
we who were in the truth, which is what they
call it, we have the truth. No one else has it.
Only we in this group have it, you know, And
the belief that, for instance said it takes on average,
at least when I was in the organization, it took
on average knocking on people's doors six point one years
to convert someone not least in the religion to the religion,
teaching them all the tenets, getting them to agree, getting
them baptized, and then getting them out knocking on doors,
whereupon at that point they're one of Jehovah's witnesses. However,
in those six years, how many people have been born?
So it's just not rational. But to think, you know,
that any all knowing God would use this method is
the equivalent of trying to swim up Niagara Falls. It
just doesn't make any sense. And the fault that no
other group, no other culture, no other people have any truth,
any morality. You know, that a mere maybe at best
twelve thirteen million people are completely holding the moral center
is just irrational. Everyone else is abusing their children, abusing
their cheating on their wives, cheating on their taxes. They
have no morality at all. The only morality are those
in our group. It's just absurd, And it's a funny
thing that It's like, you know, having chicken pox, which
will immune you from maybe a more deadly form of pots.
You come out of it and you so quickly realize, Wow,
I've been through this. I see it in another application.
Just as you said, Oh, America is God's favorite country.
You know the expression bullions and billions. We now know
it's trillions and trillions. So all all the truthions of
planets and star systems, you know, this God is only
concerned with the third planet from the Sun and a
minister spot of the Milcuar galaxy. Now the one hundred
and ninety plus nations. He's only concerned with the American people,
as if they can take the flag and plant it
on God, their God, and claim it exclusively for this nation.
It's absurd, you know, And you come out of it
and go, oh, my God. I was literally in a
brain wash cult, you know. But I agree like you
because my father. My father was wonderful, my brother is wonderful,
my oldest sister is wonderful. I have friends who are
still in the group, and they're wonderful. I just think
that they're misled, but they are wonderful people. And like you,
I've met atheists who are awful, and history has proven
that some atheists are awful. But like offing you and
many others, I view myself not so much as an
atheist first, but as a rational humanist. Well what do
you think?
Speaker 3: I was on a show with some Christian apologist years
ago and they were taking issue with something I'd written
about in my book. It was a book version of
my speech. Christianity made me talk like an idiot. And
I have a chapter in there, Become Lord Jesus, where
we you know, like everybody's looking to the sky for
their arrival of Jesus Christ. But if you look at
it even logistically, it makes no sense. And they were
talking about my protests that, well, where's he been for
two thousand years? And the rationalization was he wants to
give people more time to accept Jesus, which is why
he has delayed the rapture, you know, retrieving the believers
up into heaven. He wants more time for people to
accept him and be rescued. But it's an infinite regress.
When does that end? Because you've got millions and millions
of people being born all over the place. Though you've
got fresh people who need to be rescued, and that
cycle never ends.
Speaker 10: It's never ending. One of the most important thoughts that
I learned that helped me and out of that mindset
was by the great Frederick Douglas. There was a minister
who was criticizing him for having run away from his master,
and I said, yeah, you were wrong to run away
from your master. And he said in what way? He said,
you should have gotten on your knees and prayed to
Providence for your freedom, if that be his will. And
I've never gotten over when I read of Douglas's respondence
and he said, Sir, on my knees. For twenty years
I prayed to your God for my freedom, and it
never came. So one night I prayed with my feet
and it was mine. I think, what a wonderful expression.
We need to make the world better on our own.
We've got to do it. Stopped looking for some seedar
beyond the skies. It's up to us to make the
word looking constantly in the future. Because having been one
of Jehovah's witnesses, o armagedness just around the corner and
just in that organization, they predicted it in the eighteen
seventy eighth nineteen fourteen, nineteen eighteen, nineteen twenty, nineteen thirty eight,
nineteen sixty six, most famously nineteen seventy five. It just
goes on and on. It's just to regress it, just
like a soccer ball, just kick further down the road.
At what point do you say enough, We've got to
do it ourselves.
Speaker 3: I normally don't do counterapologetics and memes, but I did
see one that said, I believe Jesus will return in
my lifetime signed billions of dead people. I just thought
that was.
Speaker 10: A great meme, billions of dead people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Bernard, I appreciate you. Thanks for sharing your journey
out of that Jehovah's witnesses and making some good points
here out of comment in the chat that you have
a lovely voice, so people enjoy listening. Do you speak
well done?
Speaker 10: Well coming from you, coming from you, that's high praise
and d And your book you do realize that every
book that you've written them, I've got those books. Not
only do I have them, I have them all signed
by you.
Speaker 3: Thank you for that. They're not hitcheins, but I'm proud
of them. You know, at this level, I was tempted
to include colors and puzzles on a pop up section.
But they are what they are, and I appreciate the
kind words Bernard, be safe, aren't They're okay?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 10: And I promised everyone that he did not pay me
to say that.
Speaker 3: All right, take care, We'll see you later. But yeah,
interesting that he brought up Frederick Douglas, because right now
I'm in the middle of an audio book. It's narrated
by Charles Turner, as Turner narrates the words of abolitionist
and civil war human rights activist Frederick Douglas. A black
man who has been born into slavery, and he was
taught to read, I think at least partially by one
of his masters, which, of course the masters then realize
was a mistake, because as his mind became liberated, then
the rest of him would soon follow. He escaped, became free,
and then cemented his name in the history books as
one of the fiercest human rights and civil rights and
anti slavery activists in the nineteenth century. A lot of
people think that Frederick Douglas was an atheist. I don't
believe that's true, but he was a fierce critic of religion,
especially when religion was weaponized to oppress others, and he
wrote this quote in the book. He said, we have
men sold to build churches, women sold to support the Gospel,
and babes sold to purchase bibles for the poor heathen,
all for the glory of God and the good of souls.
The slave auctioneers bell and the church going bell chime
in with each other, and the bitter cries of the
heartbroken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his
pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave
trade go hand in hand. If you haven't become familiar
with the writings and the speeches of Frederick Douglas, I
would encourage you to do so, because I think they
really resonate even today. Okay, more of your calls as
we continue our time together on the other side of this,
this just popped into my brain because it just popped
onto my calendar. In the last few days, I've been
invited by a local skeptics group to go on a
ghost hunt. Apparently there is a theater in a town
in Oklahoma about an hour from me or less, and
it is supposedly haunted. I think tongues are planted firmly
in cheek. I went and looked at the website and
it's like, well, we've had some people say, you know,
so I don't know how straight they're playing it, but
this skeptics group is going to go and I guess
they're going to spend the evening or spend the night.
And they said, we know you're local, would you like
to come with us? And I said, well, I've always
wanted to do that, not because I believe in ghosts,
but because I love ghost stories and I've always kind
of wanted to grab your sleeping bag or whatever. It takes,
some cameras and audio equipment and just report from the scene.
You know, was there a corpse floating three feet above
the ground going woooo.
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: It's the laughter of children inside the walls. That's terrifying.
Where did that noise come from? The room was empty?
What's up with this temperature drop? The monitor on my
camera shows a little orbs flying around. Oh, it doesn't
look like they're floating. That couldn't have been on the breeze.
They're going somewhere on purpose. Maybe it's Grandma. I've always
wanted to just be in the room for this stuff,
And so I'm gonna go and I'll take some gear
to record some stuff, and if it turns out to
be an entertaining evening, then I'll post some stuff about
it on my channels and maybe here on the broadcast.
I don't know if it's just the skeptics group that's going.
I'm kind of hoping there will be some others involved,
true believers, the ones who were walking in and they've
got the dowsing rods and the temperature meters and the
you know, the crystals, and they're speaking to the walls.
Can you hear me? Do you have a message for
me from the afterlife? There may be a Wigi board. Hell,
I participate, you know, give me the give me the
Ouiji board. I would like to just be a part
of it. But I'm going to see what happens and
not expecting really anything to happen. But I will go
in with an open mind and then commit myself to
submitting anything for Opper scientific review if it should happen.
So check back in with me in the month of February. Hell,
even if I saw a ghost, I don't think I'd
be scared at all, because nothing can terrify me more
than the living people who occupy my home state of Oklahoma.
I'm surrounded by these Bible waving, red hatted deer leader
evangelical types who apparently don't realize what they have just done.
They either they don't get it, they don't care, or
they love it. And Natalie and I have been thinking,
I wonder who else would have us, Like if we
were to pack up Linus and Gracie and Cat and
we were to move outside of the United States. That
seems kind of a feeling. Switzerland is supposed to be
the greatest country on the planet statistically as far as
quality of life. Would Switzerland even have us? Could we
afford to live there? We've had this conversation Australia, what
a lovely place, and the country seems less insane. The
United Kingdom. Yeah, they've got their problems, but it doesn't
seem equivalent to what's happening here Canada. Canada's probably building
a barricade right now just to keep Americans from infecting them.
Even for those who think some of this are okay,
they can't afford to roll the dice, They can't take
the risk. Well, wait a minute, seventy seven million of
you lost your freaking mind. How do we know that
the rest of you aren't carriers of some virus or
brainworm that has caused all of your reasoning capacities or
moral centers to just fall away? N Naa, you stay
out of here. We got our own problems in Canada.
But Natalie and I've been talking like we are open.
We're open to getting out of Dodge. I'm not sure
I would like this front row seat to the shit show.
I've had friends outside of the United States borders reach
out and say, if you need a place to stay?
No shit, They said, do you need a place? So
I'm like, no, I you know, I'm not going to
be cat o' kaalan and sleep on your couch. But
you know a lot of people are having conversations about
where they want to be, where they want their family
and friends and anchored to be geographically when Rome burns
itself down, so to speak. Anyway, Kevin at age five zero,
thanks for calling Kevin. What's up?
Speaker 7: Well? This is kind of weird, but I just want
to tell you I love you, bro man. You're such
a good guy.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 7: Thanks. These things are weird because you know you're reaching
so many people, and then we have this strange relationship
where you don't know us, but we see you. And anyway,
that was not what I called about.
Speaker 2: I was sort of.
Speaker 7: Inspired by the discussion about moving out of the country,
and I get a little bit worked up about it
in the sense that out of care for my fellow
human beings, in the sense that it's like in twelve
step programs they got this phrase, wherever I go, there
I am, you know. And so my personal work for
my own mindset is to get right with myself no
matter where I'm at. And I know that that's, you know,
kind of lofty and philosophical, but at the same time,
it's all I can do. Really, I can't change the
macro about politics and global economics and all that stuff.
I don't think there will ever be this perfect solution.
So I've found a way to be productive and inspiring
and vibrant and potent in my own personal day to
day life and touch the people around me in the
hopes that I can just live in a better place
wherever I'm at.
Speaker 3: You ever fantasize about it just getting out of Dodge.
Speaker 7: No, I anecdotally, this is, you know, just my personal experience.
But last weekend I was at a major sporting event
in Anaheim Health and I talked to two groups of
Canadians that want to be here because they're of the
problems in their own country. They would rather be here.
And I was in Colombia a while back and they
greeted me with the most loving open arms. So I
think that again, it's like it's a personal mindset in
the work that we do on our own for ourselves
to look at it from a different way. I just
got off a sales meeting call from my job, and
our budgets this year are limited and I can't do
the job the way I think that I want to
do it. So instead of riping to my boss that
I don't have the budget that I need to do
my job effectively, I'm looking at it like, Okay, this
is what I do have, so I'm going to kick ass.
Was what I've got? Does that make sense?
Speaker 3: It does? I guess every nation has its own problems,
and it is relative. If I wish to end up
in say Yemen or Pakistan, I would be yearning for
the United States. So I guess, yeah, it does. Rec
why there's some perspective and that's I appreciate you keeping
it Kevin real quick.
Speaker 7: Don't get me started on that rabbit hole. When I
talked to Christians or other believers in whatever that have
made up their own God and their own ideas, I say, yeah,
you know, there's all these lofty things that we thank
God for here in the United States or in some
other developed country. I think, yeah, it's easy to do
when you're not born in Syria and your main goal
is not to starve to death by the time you're five.
Speaker 3: Appreciate you calling the show very much, my friend.
Speaker 7: Thanks V.
Speaker 3: I read this article in The New Republic. It was
published on the twentieth of January. It was titled the
First Resistance Failed, the next one can't, and the subtitle
was Democrats are wallowing in their failure to stop a
second Trump presidency, which looks to be even more damaging
than his first one. Snap out of it. I won't
read the article here, but you can find it by
that title if you want. Then I guess it sums
things up. Resignation on one side, and the desire to
try and continue to fight and salvage and rescue and
resuscitate and restore on the other. Side, and then I
think we're a lost cause we're circling the drain. Maybe
it's time just to do a post mortem and then leave.
And then I flip back to the other side of
the metronome and say, well, moral people need to stand
up for the moral thing. And if you and I
don't do it, who will. I'd rather go down fighting
back and forth and back and forth. And I don't know,
I'm maybe I'm weak, or maybe you can relate. Maybe
Natalie and I could like do a six month vacation
in Canada or Australia or Switzerland. Maybe we could just
do dual citizenship. Maybe maybe that's a solution. No, we've
covered a lot today. It's been fun hanging out with
you once again. We'll do it again next week. Take care.
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